


Salt Of The Earth

by problematic-fave (salt_and_burn)



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: M/M, Sort of Roman-centric POV, ambreigns - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 10:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4783832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salt_and_burn/pseuds/problematic-fave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Read some stuff about Roman and Pensacola, and a video about Dean out in the desert preparing for a match, and things brewed and spiralled from there really... I honestly just needed more Ambreigns in my life and if no one else was gonna write then I may as well. (Not beta'd, any mistakes/inaccuracies/ooc-ness is my fault considering I wrote this between 2-3am)</p>
    </blockquote>





	Salt Of The Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Read some stuff about Roman and Pensacola, and a video about Dean out in the desert preparing for a match, and things brewed and spiralled from there really... I honestly just needed more Ambreigns in my life and if no one else was gonna write then I may as well. (Not beta'd, any mistakes/inaccuracies/ooc-ness is my fault considering I wrote this between 2-3am)

Some part of Roman will always belong to the ocean. Some part deep down inside him, something in his blood and the colour of his skin and the spreading branches of his family. Some part of him will always feel the rolling tug of the waves in the deep parts of the night when he’s drifting here and there between sleep and wakefulness. He grew up in Pensacola, with the fine white sand shifting between his toes and his fingers, the strands of his hair dripping salt from the bluest blue sea water across his shoulders, water droplets clinging to his eyelashes. He was born beside the ocean, and the history of his blood is as much salt from the pacific as it is iron. Roman breathes deeper, smiles bigger, teeth shining whiter, when he returns to the sea.

But here, in the sprawling dry heat of the Nevada desert, it’s like he can’t breathe properly. The sky is too wide, horizon to horizon without the haze of an edge anywhere. The air weighs him down, makes him work harder to move through it and move it through his lungs. There’s no cool, salt-scented breeze here. There’s barely any kind of breeze. Roman is not overly fond of Vegas at all. 

But (and god dammit, there’s always, always, a but when it comes to Dean) Dean thrives here. It’s like Roman can visibly see his soul expand, billowing up and out under the too-blue bowl of the sky. The sand here, gritty with rocks and more dirt than silica, abrasive to Roman’s skin, finds a home under Dean’s ragged nails, will work its way into his wild hair if given the chance. Roman called it insidious once, and Dean laughed. ‘Becoming one with the landscape’, he said. Dean is cleaner here, clearer too, less clouded with the nerves and stale adrenaline that builds up on the road. He comes back to Roman with his light shining brighter, no longer obscured by all the things he’s sweated out running through the foothills of the desert. Roman watches him with stormy sea eyes, watches him get swallowed up by distance and the land here, worrying always that the desert will eat him whole. Dean comes back though, dusty and sweaty and smiling so wide his eyes crinkle. He always comes back to Roman.

They meld differently out here. On the road they’re always having to shape themselves to their surroundings, two large men in too-small spaces, with the ring the only space they have to expand and burn bright under the stage lights. Here, landlocked and away from most of civilisation, they can spread, can lose the sharply defined edges of themselves and bend more easily, more kindly, to each other. Dean isn’t warped, creased the way he is on the road and in the cities (especially those that remind him of Cincinnati). Roman spreads too, as much as he misses the way the sound of waves on the shore makes his blood sing. He begrudgingly adores the way he can see the colour of Dean’s eyes lighten and his spine unwind, his muscles un-tense, as he breathes in the hot, dry air and loses his body for hours in the scrub around him. 

Roman may have to work harder to breathe here, but this is the only place that he thinks Dean’s lungs truly fill all the way. He listens to the cadence of Dean’s breathing in the cold nights, is thankful that the sun of the day seeps into Dean’s bones and radiates out of his skin like a wall of mellow stone, because he’d freeze in the night otherwise. Dean’s lips are more chapped when he brushes them to Roman’s, but his kisses are softer, less about proving his bite or burning off energy, more about the way he feels things for Roman he can’t say. The nights they spend together, working their bodies in tandem in Dean’s bed (‘what else you gonna do uce, you know I ain’t got a tv’), are precious. They will always be spun in gold in Roman’s mind, shimmering tendrils of light against the purple expanse of the desert sky around them. 

He pulls Dean closer into his arms, tracks the tensing and un-tensing of Dean’s muscles as he settles his cheek over Roman’s heart. Roman loves the span of his large hands on Dean’s waist, traces the scars that mark his skin like creeks and gullies, ravines and topography lines across the earth, the world that this body is to Roman. He holds onto Dean like a buoy in the swelling of his heart, this tidal wave of a love that he thinks probably reaches the crest of the desert heavens above them. He holds on, and rocks and sways Dean with him into sleep, lulled by the phantom tug of waves at his ankles and calves. He tastes the salt of Dean's skin, buries his nose in Dean’s wild curls, scent of cinnamon and leather and clean sweat, and dreams about going back to the ocean, sinking under the surface with Dean in his arms, a world of space just for them in the depths. Roman can’t breathe in the desert, needs the salt or the sight of water around him. But thinking of all the things they do in the ring, this is not the first time he’s hurt for Dean. And he’ll suffocate just a little while longer if it means Dean can breathe.


End file.
